The Flying Cutterbucks

by Kathleen M Rodgers

  Trudy had hustled her outside. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  Jewel’s eyebrows shot up. “Said what?”

  Giggling, Trudy repeated Jewel’s comment and held open the passenger door for her.

  Jewel grabbed hold of a handle and eased herself into the lowslung car. “Must’ve been all that girl talk between you and Lupi.” Unfolding her legs, she groaned as she twisted to reach her seatbelt. “Next time we take the minivan. I don’t know how you manage to get in and out of this thing with your long legs.” She paused, her eyes shining up at Trudy. “Like father like daughter, I guess.”

  As Trudy went to close the door and walk around to the driver’s side, she caught her reflection in the diner’s window. Some might say she was too old to drive a sports car and wear hair past her shoulders, too middle-aged for tunics and leggings. But after wearing a uniform to work for years, and having to adhere to rules and regulations, Trudy dressed as she pleased.

  Pulling open the driver’s door, she tossed her slouchy purse in the space behind the bucket seats and plopped down bottom first. With one hand on the steering wheel, she kept her knees together, tucked her legs inside, and shut the door. Catching her breath, she inserted the key and said, “Where to?”

  Jewel rifled through her wallet. “Can you run me by the bank before we head to the cemetery? I like to keep some cash on hand.”

  “Is it open on Saturday? If not, we can find an ATM.”

  “The lobby’s open till one. And honestly, I avoid using ATMs. I’ve read too many stories about little old ladies getting robbed at gunpoint.”

  “In Pardon?”

  Jewel gave her the look. “Oh, you’d be surprised what stuff happens in this town.”

  Trudy’s stomach lurched at her own deceit. At the horror she and her sister had kept from their mother all these years. “Sometimes you have to block the bad stuff,” Aunt Star had convinced them that night in the kitchen. “Otherwise it will wear you down.”

  Breathing deeply, Trudy banished the bad stuff from her thoughts, shoved the car into reverse, and focused on the backup display. Jewel’s head swiveled from side to side as she told Trudy how to drive. Her mother had done the same thing to her dad. Trudy remembered how he would cock his head and waggle his eyebrows and say, “Jewel, it’s amazing how I managed to get through flight school without your help.” And she would reach over and pat his hand and say, “Yes, Shepard, but every good pilot needs a copilot.”

  The Camaro sped east on Seven Mile Road. At Coronado Street, they turned left and cruised by the old hotdog stand and the high school where a tall sign proclaimed “Home of the Pardon Cougars.” As Trudy glanced out the driver’s side window at the empty practice field, her mind filled with the sounds of snare drums rat-tat-tatting and the drum major’s whistle piercing the air. Just as she tossed a baton high overhead, an earsplitting alarm jolted her back to the present. Her gaze shifted at once to the road ahead as her cellphone honked and vibrated beside her. A second later, her mother’s phone squawked from the pocket of her velour warm-up jacket.

  Jewel picked up both phones and squinted at the displays. “Silver Alert,” she shouted over the racket. Glancing back and forth between phones, she announced the make and model of the vehicle, the license plate number, the height and weight of the missing senior citizen. Then all went quiet. After a moment, Jewel added, “Some poor old fool can’t find his way home.”

  Trudy glanced at her mother as Jewel stuck her phone back in her pocket and placed Trudy’s phone back on the console.

  Shifting in her seat, Jewel clasped the red and white box of mints in her hands and stared out the windshield. “Too bad they don’t have Silver Alerts for missing airmen lost over the skies of Vietnam.”

  Trudy caught her breath at her mother’s remark. Jewel Cutterbuck might get her words mixed up occasionally, but there was nothing wrong with her mind.

  Crossing her ankles, Jewel pried open the tin box and popped a mint into her mouth. “Here, have one.” Trudy held out her right hand as Jewel shook mints in her palm.

  Cramming a handful into her mouth, Trudy welcomed the refreshing burst of flavor, gnawing the coolness between her teeth.

  Jewel stashed the tin box in Trudy’s purse and they fell into a comfortable silence.

  A short time later as they approached the intersection of North Main and Santa Fe Way, Jewel gestured toward the futuristic building to Trudy’s left, the motor branch of The People’s Bank of Pardon. “Bogey liked to pretend the Jetsons lived there.”

  Gazing at the concrete awning that stretched over the small nondescript building with one drive-up teller box, Trudy said, “Remember how he’d stick his head out the window of the station wagon and yell, “Look out for flying cars.”

  Jewel closed her eyes and smiled. “I wonder what he would think of drones. If your brother had lived…” Her eyes fluttered open and her words hung in the air, unfinished.

  Trudy cracked her window as she broke out in a cold sweat. She hadn’t had a hot flash in years. Looking away so her mother wouldn’t see her tears, Trudy cleared her throat. “You want me to pull in there?”

  Jewel was quiet for a second. “No, let’s go to the main branch. It’s always fun to visit.”

  They headed south on Main for one block, hung a left past the former beauty school turned electronics shop, drove one block and took a right at Estacado. As they passed the gas company on their right, Trudy remarked about going there on a field trip her junior year. “A nice lady in a hairnet served us warm cookies in the test kitchen while some kid kept bugging her about the energy crisis. That whole building smelled like snickerdoodles.”

  “I remember when your business class toured the slaughterhouse. I couldn’t get you to eat meat for a month.”

  Trudy chuckled, “Yeah, and guess what they served in the school cafeteria when we got back?”

  “Hamburgers!” Jewel beat her to the punch line.

  “Momma, I can still smell the blood and muck. See the men in their rubber aprons and boots as they strung up those poor cows on meat hooks and sawed them in half.”

  Jewel poked her. “Let’s eat vegetarian tonight.”

  At the next block, a massive round building loomed into view. Trudy whipped a sharp left and pulled into a slot in front of the bank, a two-story structure that appeared made entirely of windows encased in a framework of white arched buttresses. “Aw, the mother ship.” She pocketed keys in her purse and reached for the handle. “It always reminds me of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

  Straining against her shoulder strap, Jewel gazed up at the building and remarked, “Bogey would have loved that movie. It came out a few years after he died.”

  Seconds of silence passed before Trudy steered the conversation back to the building. “Have you ever wondered why the biggest bank in town resembles a giant spacecraft? Or why the motor bank looks like the cover from an old sci-fi novel?”

  Shrugging, Jewel sighed as if she didn’t have the energy to answer.

  Pushing open the door, Trudy turned to look at her mother before getting out. “Maybe they’re trying to piggyback off Roswell’s aliens. Or when you’re stuck out here on the high plains of eastern New Mexico, you have to have something interesting to look at besides windmills, tumbleweeds, and grain elevators.”

  “Are you making fun of my hometown?” Jewel raised an eyebrow, feigning hurt. “You’re sounding like your Aunt Star.”

  Trudy shut the door and came around to the passenger side. “It’s my hometown, too, Momma. But sometimes I get the feeling we natives are always apologizing for it. We’re not quite west Texas and we’re not the sexy part of New Mexico. Have you ever wondered why the founders named it Pardon?”

  Jewel took Trudy’s hand. “And here I thought it was something biblical.”

  As her mother struggled to get out of the car, Trudy wriggled her nose. “Get a whiff of that. I smell money.”

  “The bank you mean?”

/>   “No, the stockyards. I don’t remember them stinking this bad.”

  Jewel looped her arm through Trudy’s and they headed for the glass entrance. “It’s the dairy farmers who invaded this area. We’re one of the biggest milk producers in the state, but they’ve drained the water table and the cows live their entire lives in pens in their own filth.”

  “Those poor cows,” Trudy said, recalling several dairy farms she’d passed on her way into town yesterday.

  Inside the bank, Trudy scanned the circular interior. Natural light flooded in from a scalloped skylight at the top of the dome. A wide spiral staircase led up to the second floor, and most of the outer offices appeared closed for the weekend. A handful of people milled about as Jewel made a beeline for the lone teller behind a round counter in the middle of the spacious lobby. Even the carpet carried a space theme, a pattern of gray and light blue circles of various sizes. Trudy hadn’t been in the bank in years, and she marveled at the design, slowly turning as she took it all in.

  “It’s some building for a town this size,” a man’s voice rang out behind her. “Your first time here?”

  Startled, Trudy spun and came face to face with a good-looking guy in his late thirties, his day-old beard and red cap setting off the merriest blue eyes. She tried not to stare at the campaign slogan stitched in white thread across the front of his cap. Her gaze shifted and she couldn’t help but notice his broad shoulders and chest under his T-shirt. The guy was ripped. He looked as if he’d just come from the gym.

  Would it be easier to dismiss him if he had a potbelly, scruffy beard, and beady eyes?

  Her training kicked in. For nearly forty years she’d plastered a smile on her face for strangers from all walks of life. Regardless of what they looked like or how they were dressed, regardless of where they came from or where they were going –– her job was to make each passenger feel as comfortable and safe as possible.

  She offered a friendly smile. “Good morning. I haven’t been inside this place in decades. Probably since high school.”

  “Since high school? Come on.” Cocking his head, he rubbed his chin and flashed the most adorable grin. “You look like you just graduated.”

  “Ha,” she laughed, flipping her hair back and feeling flushed. Now if she was twenty years younger… She might’ve been a “Pardon Cougar” in high school, but she wasn’t the “other kind” of cougar, the kind who pounced on younger men. She’d noticed the silver Celtic cross ring on his right hand. “Thanks for making this old lady’s day.” She glanced around the bank. “Not much has changed except the carpet. I remember a bunch of us coming here for prom photos.” She gestured toward the spiral staircase. “Back in those days, we thought this was the most glamorous place in town.”

  The guy glanced at the stairs then back at Trudy. “So you’re from around here then? I don’t mean to sound forward, ma’am, but you look like an actress I’ve seen on TV or in the movies.”

  Her mouth twitched and she suddenly felt shy. She’d heard that line before, but this young man seemed sincere. “I’m a lousy actress. I was in a school play once, but it didn’t require a speaking part.”

  The man threw his head back and laughed. His upper cheeks turned crimson, and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his gym shorts. “Sorry to have bothered you. Lots of film crews come through this area and I thought maybe, well, you have that look about you, and I was hoping to get your autograph for my daughter.”

  Daughter. The word tugged at her heart.

  She looked around. Momma was still chatting with the teller. Gripping her purse strap, her gaze drifted back to the stranger and the words emblazoned on his hat. “I’m flattered,” she said, refraining from asking him the one question throbbing through her mind: Why are you voting for that guy?

  Reeling her thoughts in before she made a fool of herself, she realized it wasn’t her job to grill this young man on his beliefs. Who the heck was she to tell others how to vote? There were years when she didn’t even vote. This used to annoy the hell out of her ex-husband, Preston. “Come on, Trudy. Don’t be an airhead.” It took the last few elections for Trudy to realize she’d been taking her citizenship for granted. It’s not something she was proud of, especially being a military brat.

  Looking around, the man began to wiggle his toes in his flipflops, like he was bored and needed to shove off. That’s when she noticed his left calf was more defined than his right, crisscrossed with scars. “Well, ma’am, you have yourself a great weekend. And I still say you look like an actress.”

  Her lips slid back into a goofy grin (she could feel it), and she gave him her best thumbs-up, just like Daddy had taught her.

  The man shuffled off, gimping as he called to someone across the way, “Hey Gus, how ’bout them Pardon Cougars?”

  Clutching her purse strap, Trudy’s heart sprinted as she watched the two men from a distance. She gathered they were discussing the Cougars win against the Hobbs Eagles at last night’s football game.

  A few minutes later, as she and Jewel exited the building, the man in the red cap hoisted himself into a small SUV parked in the designated Purple Heart slot in front of the bank.

  The air rushed out of her lungs. “He’s a veteran,” Trudy stammered, feeling a twinge of guilt. “A wounded warrior with a daughter. How can he think a man who brags about grabbing women’s crotches is going to make this country great again?”

  Jewel looked on puzzled. “Your daddy earned a Purple Heart, but he never came home and got a chance to park his car in that purple parking spot.” Grabbing a handle, she lowered herself into the car. “Maybe that young fella can’t stand the other candidate. Like I said earlier, I’m not a fan of either one of them.”

  Trudy went to shut the door. “I think Aunt Star’s right. This election is making me cranky.”

  Jewel glanced up at her and then slapped the dashboard. “Come on, girlie. Fire up this baby and let’s take her for a spin.”

  After Trudy backed out of the parking slot, she gunned the engine and they peeled out.

  CHAPTER 4

  Graffiti and Graves

  THE SPEEDOMETER hovered right at fifty as they headed east out of town on Curry Avenue toward the New Mexico/Texas line. A freight train with boxcars covered in colorful graffiti chugged alongside them on the tracks that ran parallel to the divided fourlane highway. This was the same set of railroad tracks that ran behind Jewel’s place on the opposite end of town.

  “Who could’ve guessed the sides of boxcars would become a traveling art show,” Jewel observed, gazing out the passenger window.

  Taking her eyes off the road momentarily, Trudy watched the images flash by before she refocused on the highway in front of her. “It’s like tattoos for trains.”

  “Let’s race it,” Jewel said, her eyes crinkling in a grin.

  Trudy stepped on the gas and the Camaro shot forward, its engine roaring as they caught up with the two locomotives pulling the train. “Hang on, Momma.” Trudy hit the power button and the passenger window slid down. Cool air blasted inside, along with the smell of diesel.

  Laughing, Jewel stuck her hand out the window and waved to the engineers. The train blew its horn as they sped past.

  “How fast are we going?” Jewel hollered as she fumbled for the button to roll the window up.

  “About seventy.” Trudy zipped around an eighteen-wheeler before she eased up on the gas pedal. She glanced in her rearview mirror, checking for flashing lights. “Are you having fun, Momma?”

  Jewel laughed and readjusted her shoulder strap. “Yes, but I think the speed limit is fifty-five. Let’s take a back road. Less chance of getting caught speeding.”

  At the New Mexico state line, Trudy hooked a left and they headed down a paved farm-to-market road a couple of miles before they turned left on Airport Road and headed back toward town. She remembered one summer between her junior and senior year when she and her best friend, Cheri, hopped on bikes and pedaled all the way to the Texas
line and back on this remote stretch of road. Five miles each way, no water bottles or cellphones, no weapons of any kind to protect them should a car approach and slow down. All they had in those days were strong tanned legs pumping hard as they kept their tennis shoes from slipping off the pedals.

  The road was as narrow as she remembered, no shoulder on either side. The bar ditches were full of ironweed and Russian thistles that would dry up and become tumbleweeds by winter. Off to her left, a plume of dust rose in the air from a combine harvesting a field of sorghum. Was the farmer happy working in his field? What if the farmer was a woman? Trudy had never given it much thought until now. A brown field barren of nothing but dirt and weeds flashed by on their right, a field allowed to go fallow.

  There were no other cars in sight. A quick scan at her gauges, then Trudy bore down on the gas pedal and the Camaro accelerated. Her mother slid the passenger window down again and whooped and hollered like a teenager.

  Trudy couldn’t remember the last time her mother looked so happy.

  “Faster, Shep, faster!” Jewel yodeled over the blast of cold air that gushed through the open window. Her eyes brimmed with happy tears.

  “How fast do you want to go?” Focusing on the ribbon of blacktop in front of them, Trudy floored it. Who was she to correct her mother in that fleeting moment when Jewel had slipped through a time warp?

  “Supersonic!” Jewel yelled back, the mirth in her voice causing Trudy’s heart to swell.

  Zooming by a field of fat pumpkins ready for harvest, Trudy took her gaze off the road long enough to see rivulets of emotion running along the ridges of Jewel’s cheekbones, like raindrops on the hood of a car. The decades fell behind them, and Trudy had become Daddy in the driver’s seat and Jewel was fifty years younger as they raced along in Shep’s ’69 Chevy Camaro. Jewel squealed with glee.

  They zipped past fields of corn and cotton and winter wheat. A blue commuter plane rolled down the runway and lifted off as they passed by the municipal airport. The plane passed right overhead, and Jewel waved as if the pilots and passengers could see them below.